Game Development: Siege Chess

[DamJNeT]

I think the cairn change is a good idea, but shouldn’t be implemented until they find a way to “fairly” revert any past exploits.

Where have you been ? Most of the time people who used exploits keep the advantage they got when devs change it around.

[rye130]

Let's ask for feedback, then stop addressing peoples concerns in the thread and just implement the thing without addressing any of the pointed out issues! Great job wasting another week of development time on the next failed siege system!

To be fair, we had many of your objections in mind when implementing and tweaking the system, but we felt that, to the extent that they were true, they should be subject to adjusting various numbers rather than intrinsic to the system.

I don't think numbers fix it. I'm going to be ignoring hand-bashing since that will ultimately be removed as an option for hermits probably. Whats important then is how long the ram is in range of an archer tower. You can tweak the numbers for that all you want but it doesn't reach a point where its possible for raiding big villages without being ridiculously easy to raid small ones.

Currently if I sit a ram 15 tiles away from your wall, its out of archery tower range. It gets fully charged in 24 hours. Now I wait until you're likely asleep, move the ram forward 7.5 tiles. Repair, wait an hour, move 7.5 tiles and smash your wall.

There was like a 1-2 hour window when you could be online to build new archery towers to defend your base. Any archery towers built outside of that window, I can build a catapult, let it charge for 2 hours, and smash the towers. If there are too many towers built and its not worth it to catapult, then I just don't raid you and only really lose the ram materials while you lost plenty of materials yourself building the archery towers.

The only number to tweak really is the time window when the ram would be in range, and would need to be increased to like 8 or 12 hours in order for it to maybe not make every hermit easily raidable.

[Kaios]

The idea is to add more gameplay to the siege experience, and make it a reasonably fun and balanced experience for everyone involved. Fully possible that this makes no one happy, but if siegeing was impossible as it was, I do at least not think that we've changed too much about that in one go.

I figured out why so many people dislike it

[Granger]

FYI: Some posts with personal attacks removed, stop user bashing and keep The Moot in The Moot.

[Granger]

I honestly don't get your problem with claim magic

It's ugly, frankly. It also tends to incentivize setting up weird claim structures for weird purposes.

regarding walls it already exist with being unable to build them (which is a good idea and should stay)

I'm not sure the presence of some ugly things is a good argument for adding more of them. That being said, it's not like there isn't some merit to your suggestion, so I may consider it. Reluctantly, though.

I can understand your reservations, on the other hand I can't see a way without it that wouldn't be exploited by the usual suspectes to flatten places of others even flatter than currently.

But a legitimate and practical way to remodel walls is needed (as not everyone is perfect with them the first time) as the current cascade approach (as of repeated waiting of wrecking balls, or having to redo dozends of brick and wrought stockpiles in case it is out of control and RNG shines on it) isn't fun in terms of the game being more attractive than RL.

[mgmmads]

Really lovely update as usual! I adore the change to sieges, that defenders have some means of defending themself, beside roaring out through the gates with alts, and that it creates a really interesting ping pong between the attackers and the defenders (Or chess as you call it). The cairn changes are very welcome as well! Especially the distance changes, it creates a suttle contrast between what was build prior to the update and those build in the future. I love that kind of view when walking through the world.

[rhzk]

Good job!

[VDZ]

I've said it before and I will say it again: I don't think siege, in the sense of gaining full theft and vandalism access to an entire village through whatever system, will ever work in a way that will satisfy the attackers.

To be fair to the defenders, the attackers must expend an amount of effort that is at least some fraction of the effort that went into building the base and acquiring its contents - and with countless hours spent doing that, even a fraction of it would be an insanely long time - or be trivial to disrupt, as failure to disrupt would mean entirely losing everything, therefore having disruption being difficult would feel unreasonable to defenders (why must one failure lead to the complete annihilation of an entire village?). Naturally, this leads to attacking being unfun, with attackers having to spend tons of effort (people in this thread consider even checking siege engines once per hour for 24 hours too much) for a high failure chance and - relative to the effective effort spent to successfully raid including wasted effort on failures - little gain (whatever loot you get is unlikely to be worth the effort, particularly considering the enemy's goods are likely of equivalent quality to yours). The losses of unsuccessful defenders will always greatly exceed the gains of successful attackers, therefore no 100% base raid system can ever be fairly balanced yet still be fun for attackers.

In real life, wars are rarely fought with the intent of simply annihilating the enemy, but rather to accomplish some goal, usually political control over some area and its resources. In Haven, complete annihilation of the enemy is the only thing that can be achieved through its primary form of warfare (political control of disputed territory is acquired either via the seemingly not frequently used realm challenge system, or for proper control the siege system - which requires far too much effort to simply break down a banner due to using the same system as is used for complete annihilation), and ironically enough control over local resources are the one thing you cannot get through warfare. When denying your enemy fun is the only possible outcome of successful warfare, how could it possibly be made fun? As I've said before, focus PvP on other areas than base raiding. Look at the flaws of localized resources and realm conflicts; I think there is far better design space there for PvP gameplay that could be fun for both sides.

Tbh, i think bothering with siege is only going to irritate people and the people who want you to rework siege won't be happy unless they can walk up and push your wall over with little to no effort. I hope we can move on from this now.

I think if you imagine the game completely without any siege system, that would very much not be an improvement. Even if sieging is used seldom, it's still important to get it right.

Has siege ever been used properly in the way you envisioned, though, not counting sieges against inactive villages? All of the successful sieges I've heard about were successful through other means (insider shenanigans for example) or exploits. Even if you want to "get it right", is there even any way to do that? And for that matter, what specifically is that "it" that you intend to get right? Perhaps you need to consider this from a higher level: What are the problems you are trying to solve, and are the systems currently in place - not the implementations, but the general concepts - really the correct solutions for those problems? To me, it seems like a problem that the system used to get to a protected localized resource is the same as the system used to entirely wipe a group of players off the map; linked like that, attempted solutions for one problem will inherently affect the other and limit your options. I think there is certainly potential for warfare for control of localized resources, for political (realm) control, and even for discouraging (not annihilating) players from remaining in a certain place, but I do not think sieges that grant 100% access to bases are the right solution for any of them.

[Astarisk]

I think if you imagine the game completely without any siege system, that would very much not be an improvement. Even if sieging is used seldom, it's still important to get it right.

I very much agree that it is important to get right. We should have a working siege system before we start having incentives to siege. As it stands any iteration of siege they do is going to fall flat as no one is really going to bother to test it out.


As it stands sieging is currently worthless and is more just a slap in the face of opponents. You get zero loot out of it, zero bonuses, no benefits what so ever. The only way siege has ever been worthwhile in the past was when it was done stealthly and the enemy having no knowledge. All the loot is moved and anything worthwhile destroyed before the walls are even down.

Even this new system fails to address issues with sieging and the various Z-Levels. If I'm in danger all I need to do is just move all my stuff down a Z-Level and everything remains protected. All that gets harmed is the current Z-Level thats being sieged. Until there is a siege system that can deal with this its pretty pointless to even try to siege. Most everyone in this game have no need to worry at all.

What I'd like to see in the future is more incentives towards sieging. Even attacking a realm's coronation stone is pointless. All that happens is they lose half their authority and move the stone. Previous worlds you might get lucky and they have their buff statues right out in the open with their coronation stone and you can provide a minor inconvenience as they rebuild them, but now we are wise enough to keep the buff statues fairly separated from one another.

The heart of the industry is easily rebuilt and moved (Anvils can just be picked up and carried away! Why not make it a static object that can't be moved?). The only static industrial resources are kilns + smelters, and even those can be remade easily to near exact -- if not better qualities than what gets destroyed.

[NeoRed9]

I like the hat.